In recent years, one area in which Panerai's sought to distinguish itself is in the use of novel materials, both for aesthetic reasons, and to provide real materials advantages in technical watchmaking. This is an imperative inherited from Panerai's roots, as a watchmaker, in making practical tool watches for challenging real world applications, and from its heritage as an engineering company that made naval instruments in addition to watches for a number of different purposes, but Panerai today is innovating in materials that its original watchmakers and designers never dreamed of.

Brainstorming and concept development happen in a collaborative atmosphere at Panerai's in-house workshop, the Laborotorio di Idee, or "laboratory of ideas." The Laborotori di Idee operates in a workshop fashion, and very closely with the design department in Milan, to evaluate new materials and methods, and to develop design inspiration in order to bring such new assets to fully mature and realized form as Panerai wristwatches.

Despite the high-tech nature of many of the materials and processes the staff at the Laborotorio di Idee work with, the team uses a surprisingly, and charmingly, low-tech method for graphically tracking projects: a LEGO task board, which allows each team member to track both their own progress through evolving projects, and well as the progress of each project overall. It's very much a "there are no bad ideas" environment and although not every first concept makes its way into production, an openness to new ideas is essential for the Laborotorio to do its work, so an atmosphere of relaxed give-and-take is deliberately fostered.

In some cases, materials at Panerai are used mostly for aesthetic reasons, although in every case they must still pass the acid test for utility and reliability under real life conditions. Bronze, for instance, is hardly a new material, and it has a long history of use in marine environments thanks to its ability to develop a surface patina that resists deeper corrosion. At Panerai, though it's primarily a material whose appeal lies in the unique patina each watch develops over time, the fact that it's a practical material in a marine environment is a big part of its attraction as well.

Panerai has also developed the ability to create a full range of complicated watches, ranging from simple complications such as chronographs, to what traditionally were considered "high complications," including astronomical complications, rattrapante chronographs, and even minute repeaters.

One of Panerai's best-kept secrets is its tourbillon, which was first introduced in the caliber P2005. This is a unique tourbillon configuration in which the carriage rotates in a plane at right angles to the movement plate. This combined with the angled placement of the tourbillon within the movement, provides many of the chronometric advantages of a multi-axis tourbillon, but with much higher reliability and robustness.

In the materials science department, Panerai makes extensive use of its Carbotech composite. Carbotech is manufactured by laminating thin sheets of carbon fiber under high pressure and controlled temperatures, with a special polymer (PEEK, or Polyether Ether Ketone, which is an engineering polymer that has high resistance to chemical and mechanical stress; it's an ideal partner to carbon fiber). The resulting material is much lighter than traditional case steels, as well as essentially impervious to corrosion, unaffected by magnetism, and hypoallergenic – its visually striking banded striations give it very handsome aesthetics as well.

A more recent innovation is BMG-Tech. BMG stands for Bulk Metallic Glass, and while glass doesn't sound like anything from which you'd even remotely want to make a watch case, BMG-Tech is in fact a very sophisticated form of metal alloy. The term "glass" refers to its internal crystalline structure – glass as a material is unlike many solids in that it has no regularly repeating crystalline lattice, but is instead "amorphous" in its atomic microstructure. BMG-Tech is created by injecting the molten alloy (titanium, nickel, aluminum, zirconium, and copper) into a mold and then cooling it so rapidly that a regular crystal structure doesn't have time to form. The absence of a crystal structure in the metal means that the structural weaknesses typically found in cast metals (especially at boundaries between different crystal grains) aren't present, and you end up with an alloy that's light, very high in strength, and also much tougher than many industrial ceramics. It's an ideal material for technical dive watches, which is why Panerai uses it in the Submersible line.

The Panerai BMG-Tech Submersible.

And finally, in 2016 Panerai introduced a most interesting new watch – the Panerai Luminor "Lo Scienziato" Luminor 1950 Tourbillon GMT Titanio (Ref. PAM00578) with an exotic new materials process. The case for this watch was created using a technique known as DMLS, or Direct Metal Laser Sintering. In simple terms, this is a 3D printing process, but unlike most 3D printing, it's not done with thermoplastic resins. Instead, the watch case is built up out of powdered titanium, which is sintered together (sintering refers to using heat to bond powdered metals together without using such high temperatures that they're completely liquified) in layers only 0.02mm thick.

Panerai's Lo Scienziato Luminor 1950 Tourbillon GMT Titanio.

The fact that the fabrication process can be so precisely controlled, allowed Panerai to make a case of unprecedented in lightness, by skeletonizing the internal structure of the case without sacrificing strength and durability. In 2016 it was the very first watch ever created with a case produced by metal 3D printing, but the flexibility and creative possibilities of the process mean that there are many potential uses in the future.

Watchmaking at Panerai has evolved far from its roots in simple, steel-cased, waterproof watches for combat divers. But the brand hopes to keep that pioneering spirit alive even as it evolves into a future defined by cutting edge materials and methods. It's a testimony to the versatility of the original designs that no matter the actual implementation, the basic strengths of the original Radiomir and Luminor designs are as robust as ever, many decades after they were first strapped to the wrists of divers and slipped below the surface of the sea.